Don't make the same mistake as four years ago, when you and Puro were prematurely celebrating South America's "dominance", before the tournament really started. It's still early days, the tournament really starts in the knockout-out stages.

blutgraetsche wrote:Don't make the same mistake as four years ago, when you and Puro were prematurely celebrating South America's "dominance", before the tournament really started. It's still early days, the tournament really starts in the knockout-out stages.

Can understand the pessimism, but on current brief evidence, it does not appear that the best european teams have struck a brilliant balance yet. Germany won convincingly, but were consistently leaving space between the midfield and defence. A better team will be able to take advantage of this.

Spain is pretty self explanatory, and after that, there's a noticeable drop off in terms of talent, even if France, Holland and Italy appear to be functioning teams.

Hlebagone wrote:Can understand the pessimism, but on current brief evidence, it does not appear that the best european teams have struck a brilliant balance yet. Germany won convincingly, but were consistently leaving space between the midfield and defence. A better team will be able to take advantage of this.

Spain is pretty self explanatory, and after that, there's a noticeable drop off in terms of talent, even if France, Holland and Italy appear to be functioning teams.

blutgraetsche wrote:Don't make the same mistake as four years ago, when you and Puro were prematurely celebrating South America's "dominance", before the tournament really started. It's still early days, the tournament really starts in the knockout-out stages.

Exactly. It is too soon to jump to conclusions. The most important thing is to peak at the right time.

Going by Urs Siegenthaler's (Löw's influential tactical advisor) comments in recent interviews, the space left between defence, midfield and attack may have been intentional to a certain degree, at least in the rather brutal conditions of Salvador at noon. Siegenthaler explained how Brazil won the Confed Cup last year with a formation that very much looked like a classic Brazilian 4-2-4, with attackers and defenders (more or less) staying where they are, Neymar and co waiting for the ball to score, won back by a compact midfield and defence. "Archaic" in tactical terms, but probably effective in this WC. Both Germany and Holland showed elements of this approach in their matches, for example.

I personally think that being tactically flexible is most important, as the weather conditions are very different, depending on your location. In the relatively cool South, it may even make sense to play a modern pressing game.

Do you all think the gap between South America and Europe is widening or pretty constant with the obvious ups and downs?

Like it is with the national leagues, which become more and more unbalanced with the ongoing professionalism of football? Or is it not really possible, because the good players from SA can still play in the top leagues of europe

You're right. And then I remember you're now ahead of South America for the first time since 1954, thanks to the Spanish accident of the last WC.

Accident because otherwise the South American Dutch would have won it ?

Accident because it felt almost like Greece. They were the first champions to lose a game and the champions wth the worst attack ever (less goals scored ever). And were very lucky against Paraguay. And had never reached a semis before. That was a dark horse WC.